Coffey Brand Refesh

Coffey is a professional services consultancy delivering technical excellence and innovative solutions to manage complex risk in challenging environments.

In 2012, as a response to findings from extensive client and market research, Coffey underwent a brand refresh led by Principals Brand Agency that shifted the company’s business structure from sub-brand to master-brand strategy, developed a renewed client-focused vision, and established a new visual, verbal and digital identity.

Coffey rolled out their newly refreshed branding globally in 2013 and required the services of a Graphic Designer to produce branded collateral and work closely with the Brand Manager to help lead the transition internally. Working in the Marketing and Communications team, I ensured a high level of brand integrity was maintained across the business through the creation of engaging visual communication collateral that promoted the brand to the utmost highest standard.

A significant part of this role also involved the design, production and management of internal and external multimedia assets, brand guidelines, campaign marketing collateral, templates and creation of support infographics for multi-million dollar bids.

Since the commencement of Coffey’s brand refresh early in 2013, I have helped support a global rebrand, produced high quality graphics for a number of successful multi-million dollar proposals, led the brand refresh for offshore subsidiary company MSI, and applied UX design principles to a major digital transformation project.

At the commencement of the course we had the chance to work on a project of our own choosing, so I thought this would be a great opportunity to bring an idea I had been mulling over for a little while to life.

MoorMe provides boaties with an intuitive online platform for comparing berth prices and a more efficient way to book a berth. Currently there is no solution that aggregates overnight pricing information, provides the ability to filter marinas via services / amenities or shows marina berth availability for the 350 marinas in Australia.

Throughout the project’s journey I leveraged my design thinking skills and built upon my knowledge of human centred design principles to discern the feasibility, viability and desirability of the proposed service. By applying UXD principles throughout the process I was able to identify the core problem experienced by user, conduct meaningful research, engage in meaningful two-way conversations with users, develop useful personas informed by research, and gain valuable insights into human behaviour.

MoorMe has also been recognised as one of Australia's most innovative services and ranked 39th in one of the largest innovation awards of its kind in Australia – the Anthill Magazine SMART 100 Index 2016. MoorMe also placed 12th on the SMART 100 Readers’ Choice Winners list.

Melbourne Food and Wine Festival

The brief was to create a set of 3 magazine advertisement concepts promoting the upcoming Melbourne Food and Wine Festival. I decided that using subtle elements of food and wine in the actual graphics would best represent the concept of a food congregation and successfully engage readers. As the event is held in Melbourne, fashioning a string of noodle, grains of rice and a splash of red wine into the shape of Victoria would be instantly recognisible particularly when accompanied by a punchy tag line.

Westpac Customer Experience Design Research

Westpac’s Customer Experience (CX) team use visual communication as a key research tool, driver of idea generation and strategic change agent. This project addressed a real opportunity within the team to better identify appropriate visual communication strategies to use with their business stakeholders.

I spent 3 months working with Westpac’s CX team in Sydney as part of my yearlong Honours project. The assignment focused on discovering effective means to express information about CX research to business stakeholders, how visual deliverables can improve communication in the specific context of a pilot project, and the value the CX team can provide to the wider Westpac business.

Donate Life

For this class project we were tasked to design an outdoor media campaign for a non-profit organisation. The set of 3 billboard advertisements for DonateLife have been designed to encourage people to become an organ donor. The most important feature was to include a succinct message that can be communicated to audiences in a few seconds given these advertisements would be placed adjacent to a highway. The twist on words in the tag line, bold graphic and the sincere call to action successfully delivers the target message in a short period of time.

Coffey Data Transformation Project

Coffey commenced a major digital transformation project in 2015 with the intent of maximising knowledge capture, analysis and creation to lead to deeper insights and innovation. Our vision was to enable our client’s ambitions by bringing data to life and delivering a memorable experience when interacting with our brand.

The team delivered an interactive prototype that combined multiple data sources to help clients manage risk and uncover opportunities earlier.

Working in an agile environment I collaborated closely with the team’s Data Leads, Service Designer, UI Designer and UX Designer during the 70-day proof of concept phase. Using human-centred design methodologies we were able to rapidly deliver artefacts that could be tested and validated with clients.

As I have a deep understanding of Coffey’s visual identity, I helped define the overall look and feel of the solution and the different data visualisation techniques that aided in having meaningful client conversations.

Having researched data visualisation best practices, provided graphics support for the interactive prototypes and helped translate user-testing insights into actionable UI updates, I then used this knowledge and other data sources to synthesise project insights into an end-to-end customer journey map – a first for the company.

Dairy Farmers

The class brief for this project was to research an Australian brand and promote 3 of the company’s products in a magazine advertising campaign. My intention was to use positive and negative space, with the addition of a block colour, to present a bold, high contrast layout that would stand out in a magazine spread. The white space in each of the designs depicts a crop of a popular utensil and a slogan that is often associated with the respective product.

Typographic Foundry

This set of 6 type-based postcards was designed for the Typographic Foundry Workshop. The class brief was quite flexible regarding the overall graphic, with the only requirement being that the design needed to feature typography as the dominant theme. I believed this would be a great opportunity to experiment with a decorative typeface and inspirational messages. The expression and associated graphic complements one another, with the bold, solid colour palette generating an appealing aesthetic.

Around the World in a Lunchbook

Jesmond Public School wanted to celebrate its multicultural roots by producing a quality cookbook showcasing the students, their families and their exquisite dishes. I saw this as a fantastic opportunity to give back to my local community by offering my creative expertise to the project. I was engaged to design the 85 page publication ‘Around the World in a Lunchbox’ whilst completing my Honours year. The overall design was inspired by a scrapbook theme and contains Polaroid framed photos, handwritten typefaces and textured backgrounds. The cookbook was extremely well received in the local community and has sold over 500 copies in the Hunter region.

Coffey Annual Report

Annual reports are an important means of communication for many companies. 2014 was the first year Coffey brought the entire design process in-house after I proposed engaging a more cost-effective approach, resulting in a smooth consultation process, significantly lower production costs and a professional, high quality end product. I coordinated the design and print production process for the 2014 and 2015 Annual Report and Reviews, from conceptualising initial ideas to the supply of print-ready and electronic artwork.

The company’s operational activities, strategic direction and achievements shifts each year, requiring new design concepts to be devised to align with the renewed focus. As a designer that has an intimate understanding of the corporate brand identity and design processes, this allowed me to methodically monitor each stage of the development, ensuring that all branding guidelines were adhered to, all changes were incorporated and if there were any potential issues that they were mitigated early.

It was imperative to design a report that is not only sophisticated and attractive, but informative, readable and engaging. An entirely new headline and illustration set was developed for the 2015 report to support the publication’s message, with the bold use of colour throughout transforming simple charts and figures into compelling graphical visualisations.

The overall design process and cost saving initiative was highly commended and looked upon favourably by the company’s Board of Directors and Group Executive team.

Photography

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve had a passion for photography. It’s always been a hobby of mine. I see beauty in even the most mundane things, so wherever I go you’ll see me snapping photos.

DeZine Magazine

The brief for this project was quite open and allowed students to capture any subject, so long as the photograph was taken using a professional studio set up. I created a fictional magazine, DeZine, which provides articles on the tips and tricks of the creative trade, ranging from design applications to photography skills. I’ve always been fascinated with the way light interacts with water, so I selected this element to feature on the cover and experimented with lighting, contrast and HDR toning to achieve the contrasting effect seen here.

Coffey Leadership Event

Coffey held its first global leadership conference in Sydney 2014. This called for an interactive, cross platform solution to be developed to communicate essential information about the manner in which the business operates to the company’s top leaders. I developed the branding for the event, designed and created a fully responsive website that can be easily accessed on any device, provided graphic support for all conference presenters and generated a range of promotional material such as posters, templates, icons and art packs.

Drawings

I’ve always enjoyed getting my hands dirty and just drawing for the sake of it. Whether it be with graphite or charcoal, achieving the desired shadow effect or getting a facial curve just right, drawing has been a somewhat therapeutic activity. The drawings seen here are of two characters from one of my favourite television shows ‘Supernatural’, and a sketch of a nude model I drew in a live art class.

Summer Design Ball

The poster here was designed for the University of Newcastle’s 2011 Summer Design Ball. I wanted to deviate from the characteristic theme of summer, instead focusing on a retro music as the subject. I’ve included a layered vinyl record graphic as the main graphic to create dimension in the layout.

Coffey Learning and Development Initiative

2015 saw the launch of Coffey’s new learning and development platform. A bespoke identity was developed for the program, with the primary illustration graphic characterising the collaborative theme of the initiative. A variety of branded collateral, from email announcements to report templates, was also created to support the new identity.

Yak Magazine

This concept magazine cover for the University of Newcastle’s youth magazine ‘Yak’ was designed for the Halloween edition. The photographic cover features a skeleton figure with a red hue overlay. One of the challenges was trying to find a photographic subject that wasn’t overly cliché, but still successfully epitomised Halloween. The lighting subtly emphasises the subject’s form, creating an eerie ambiance.